


these workloads for hope

by sunshowerst



Series: danny and rusty and no one else on earth [10]
Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Arguing, Character Study, Danny Doesn't Know What He's Doing, F/M, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Canon, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 09:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30104079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshowerst/pseuds/sunshowerst
Summary: Danny loves Tess, he really does. And for once, Rusty doesn't understand the way Danny thinks, even when Danny explains himself to him for the first time in years.In hindsight, that should've been a sign enough.
Relationships: Danny Ocean & Rusty Ryan, Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan, Danny Ocean/Tess Ocean
Series: danny and rusty and no one else on earth [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128335
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	these workloads for hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cleardishwashers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/gifts).



> its not that long but im working on a linus pov one! thats something i think

Weeks into planning to rob a galavanting real estate mogul of his most valued and least known of bonds - a favor from Bobby Caldwell was always a good thing to be owed, friendship aside - Danny feels he needs to talk to Rusty, in private, about something he's not that sure of knowing about himself. 

It's been those same weeks since they'd last had time to talk alone, because they never did this with other people around - no matter how close those people were - and it's when Danny told him about the engagement, about Tess, about her eyes twinkling in low lights and her Cupid's bow and the way she made him feel normal, accomplished, at home. 

Rusty didn't say anything for a while, and then he told Danny, after a long swig from the bottle they ordered in a civilized restaurant, that he thought it's a bad idea. 

Danny told him that he'd thought Rusty would understand what it meant to him, when he'd gone back into hiding after a pull and a home cooked meal waited on him along with her. 

He looked even less on board with the idea, and Danny is too drunk to study his face like he'd wanted to. 

Rusty asked if she knew. 

Danny said that she didn't, yet. 

Rusty smiled, forlorn, and took another swig. _Don't get your hopes up, Danny. You can't live a lie._

 _I know it doesn't make sense, but I love her,_ Danny had said, his tongue in control more than any other body part he could still account for was. _Not like you would know._

They never talked about Rusty never having a thing, not one more long-term than a week. They joked about it sometimes and that'd been the extent of it - never in a serious conversation, never a thought or two spared to delve into the whys, the what fors. 

One look at Rusty's face after he'd said it made Danny wish it stayed that way. 

"I called in Basher, he got the incendiaries."

"Rus--" 

"I'll see you when I've got something," he says, cooly, dropping bills on the table. 

Danny drained the rest of Rusty's Merlot and tried to pretend the nausea he'd felt was from all the alcohol he'd handled concerningly well on any other day. 

Now, if he doesn't move to knock on the motel door and get inside or leave, he'll raise suspicion more than any of the three-by-three foot materials Basher had been smuggling in the room down the hall did. 

-

"Why are you sitting on the floor?" 

It's the first thing he asks, almost on instinct, decidedly ignoring the pileup of red bull cans and drained coffee cups on every non-subzero surface, and hoping they'd not been mixed at any point in the past couple of days he'd spent on a supply run. 

Rusty, for his part, sits in a seiza between piles of outstretched papers and doesn't turn around to look at him. It stings, but it's fair. 

"No room for plans on the table."

He throws another glance at the concerning lack of any semblance of food wrappers or containers atop the darkwood finish, and resists the urge to point it out. 

"You yelled at Basher."

"That's what you're here for?" Rusty asks in that way that lets him know he doesn't need it answered. "And I apologized." 

That wasn't the point, he knew. And if he knew, so did Rusty. But that also wasn't why he'd come here, so he hums noncommittally instead of explaining things for an audience of none. 

"When's the last time you slept?" 

"Two days ago." 

"Rus."

"Three days ago." 

Fat chance. "Mhm. And if I asked you to get up off the floor right now--" 

"Leave me alone, Danny," he says and sounds too controlled for his liking. Four days at the least, then. That hadn't happened in a while. Since they were teens, actually, and he's not a little annoyed now. 

"Because you're clearly responsible enough to be left alone."

Rusty lets his head fall back and somehow his pencil stays in place behind his ear, until he takes it to circle something to his right. 

"Didn't stop you before." 

"What?"

He does sway a bit when he gets up, Danny notes absently, despite the acid at the back of his throat. 

"It's taking this long. I used to plan with you. Now I also got to plan around you," Rusty says in a tone that lets Danny be blameless. Small mercies. He rubs his thumb between his bottom lip and the beginnings of a stubble below it, and Danny feels absently guilty for almost always being the reason for it. "What if she calls tomorrow when I need you to butter up our fence? Will you not leave?" 

Danny stares, cornered at point blank, and _wants_ to say no. But he wanted to have a proper shot at this. As himself. She could know he's a thief now. And when she knows it won't be any different. Tess loves him. He loves her. He'll tell her on the honeymoon and she'll look at him the same. 

He looks at Rusty and Rusty sighs after a moment passes between them, all the anger goes out the window, like he'd heard what Danny was thinking.

Knowing Rusty, he probably did. 

"Sorry. I haven't slept in three days. I'm just saying things because I'm agitated." 

Danny raises his eyebrows at the apology, and they stay like that till Rusty sighs again. 

"I yelled at Basher." He winces, guilt-ridden, and rubs at his face like that would help at all. Danny feels that same guilt envelop him like the hugs Tess gave him after days of unexplained leave - he sees his fingers are shaky and the circles around his eyes more purple than his grape colored shirt that he probably picked for the joke - the masochist - and it's because of Danny. 

Tess is waiting for him and alone in their apartment, Rusty is accommodating him instead of getting any sleep, and they're not even talking, and Danny knew now where he'd belonged. 

"You don't have to plan around me, Rus. I'll go home."

Rusty turns to look at the plans scattered on the floor of his room, in an order Danny wasn't here to pick up on and flow with. Just another reason for him to get out of Rusty's hair - short, when'd he cut it? - and out of the way. He nods, the faraway expression back on his face. 

"I know. I already checked you out." 

And then he walks out of the door, soundless like a sleight of hand he'd do for Basher's sakes when they'd sit for surveillance together.

There's not enough alcohol in the world to make him as sick as he'd felt then, hearing that. 

-

Tess hugs him, excitedly recounting what Marcy had told her about the new florist that'd edited for Vogue at some point, and lists off the first few items she'd thought of for their wedding gift wishlist. He kisses her, soft, before they walk into the car, before she can ask, _what was that for?_

He doesn't feel nauseous anymore. 

-

The next time he's calling Rusty, he's not answering. And Rusty always picks up.

Danny sits to plan on his own. On his terms, in the hotel room that had a perfect view of the museum - Tess' museum, he thinks, and smiles grimly at his whispy reflection in the glass. 

He'd told her what he does for a living, on their honeymoon, in the suite in Bali he paid for with stolen money. 

At least that's how she'd put it, in between screaming at him and chucking about every movable piece of inventory and furniture in their bedroom for the month, and Danny wonders why he ever thought honesty pays off when he'd spent the better part of his life being anything but that, because he knew that it doesn't. 

They'd returned soon after and she'd been giving him the cold shoulder but not exactly much more or less to go on and decide if he'd lost her. She didn't bring up divorce, and Danny never would because that was the legal way, and the part of himself he'd never not be true to wouldn't let him. 

So he books a room, and sees her walk into work every odd day of the week. The rest of the time he plans, and wonders what part of it he'd count into regrets when enough time has passed for him to learn how to count what matters again. 

-

He gets the call back when he's near done, all on his own and with some help from Livingston, for the security system tie-ins and the authenticators in the basement he didn't want to bother bringing off-line. A hole here and there, and another one over there. Rusty could sort it. Rusty was always better at this than he was.

"Hi."

"Could you--"

"What time."

"You're not gonna--"

"Livingston told me."

Makes sense, Danny thinks after a second. He probably thought Rusty was there anyways. He doesn't get to process the unease he failed to feel at how unreal these last few months felt. 

"Nine. I'll pick you up."

Maybe when Rusty's here the world will be tangible again. 

-

Rusty does fly in. And doesn't bring a duffel bag along. Well. 

That could wait till they're off the tarmac. 

-

"It's incan matrimonial headmasks."

"Sure." Rusty waits for a moment, probably looking for signs that he's joking. He sets his cappuccino down when he doesn't seem to find any. "I'm listening." 

He tells him everything. The guard's rotations, the three windows and one fake out one, the laughably facilitated power grid and light fixtures and how he could rob it and walk out of there hopping and blindfolded. 

Rusty looks at him for a bit more, and props his head up with his left arm. 

"You don't have a fence."

"Not exactly here, at least."

"And how will you move them?" 

"Well we could--" 

"I can't see how. You're just one guy, that's got an off-shore fence and two Neils." He doesn't say, _and me._ Point taken.

Danny still asks, because guilt goes both ways and he was already going to hell, anyways. 

"You're not in?" 

"You shouldn't be either," Rusty says, conversationally so Danny doesn't see how much it took out of him to say it. 

"I thought you'd wanted me to go back to this." He hears bitterness in his own voice, and knows it's unfair, knows for once and with unshakeable surety that this he will regret. Rusty just stares at him, the look incomprehensible on purpose.

"You're going to end up in prison over this… petty grief. And I'm not gonna have any part in it." 

"Petty grief? You're the one that didn't pick up. For two days." 

"I was at the... doesn't matter. I would've told you this same thing two days ago. if you are bored just rob a bank." 

"I'm not bored." 

Rusty stares at him again, realization flicking his eyes alight in buzzing, dull blue. 

"You told her."

Danny nods, and feels his fingers itch when he reaches for his rum again. Rusty is quiet until he'd drunk all of it, his eyes fixed on something Danny couldn't see when he turned to look for it behind him. 

"For once I wish you'd listen to me," he says to himself.

"You said not to-" 

"I did." 

"Well I still--" 

"--love her?" He says, and it lacks the mocking tone that would've justified the anger that flared up in his chest. "That why you're robbing the place she works in?" 

"It's not like she's the mark!" 

"And if you told this to anyone else, wouldn't they think so? That you long conned her till an opportunity good enough--" 

"You _know_ it's not that," he says and he's really angry as he does, and Rusty has that look on his face, like he expected to take the brunt of this anyways, like he expected back then of Danny to leave, and Danny feels an unease settle in his stomach like sharp-edged rocks. 

"I do." Rusty says quietly. Placatingly. It's a warning enough in it's own rite that Danny's being unreasonable. Should've been, at least. "But she won't know. No one else will." 

Danny looks down at the table, remembering how quickly her face switched from loving to furious, how her lips shaped around the word _liar_ and _scumbag_ like she'd wanted them to injure him, before she'd taken up a physical approach. She wasn't to blame, though, for any of it. But neither was Rusty. 

"I love her, you know." 

"Then why didn't you tell Reuben you got married?" 

He looks up and exhales sharply, and Rusty isn't going to relent, or raise his voice. And he'd flown all the way here, so Danny knows that it's not because he doesn't care. The opposite of that, really. 

Danny still tries for a warning. 

"Rusty." 

He looks exhausted after their staredown, enough to step aside in this, and only now Danny really looks at him. At his right arm, and how uneven the sleeve was compared to the left one. 

"Your arm is-"

"Two weeks and they take this off." 

"Your right arm--" 

"I'm ambidextrous."

"And that's why you didn't--" 

"Stan shut it off." 

"Rus," he begins. And knows as he does that nothing he says will do. Rusty wasn't even supposed to be on planes, that had to have been the rule. "I'm sorry."

And Rusty knows it's not the call he's apologizing for. 

"Don't do it, Danny."

"I have to."

Rusty shakes his head that might as well have been a white flag flown. He doesn't say anything when he walks away from their table again. 

-

-

-

Danny stares at the tupperware box of cookies on his desk. Bruiser, his best friend in this new world that ends with a barbed wire fence, oogles at them from the top bunk. 

"Home made?" 

"Uh-huh," he says finally, smiling despite it all and liking the bitter taste of it because it's familiar. 

He deserved that.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, appreciation is much appreciated!


End file.
